


Walking the wire

by mysterious_intentions



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, POV Draco Malfoy, Sort Of, alternate scene of Hermione at Malfoy Manor, brief descriptions of blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:02:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27623116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterious_intentions/pseuds/mysterious_intentions
Summary: He felt his feet carry him towards Granger’s prone form and scoop her into his arms. She was so light—a skeletal structure with skin pulled over— the only indication that she was even alive was the faint warmth radiating from her body.Instinctively, Draco curled Granger’s battered body protectively against his chest. His eyes darted from his father and mother, and he watched the panic peek out of their occlumency shields the longer he stood motionless and clutching Granger.“I’m sorry,” he blurted out. Because he was, he truly was. His inability to stomach Hermione Granger’s torture may have cost his parent’s and himself their lives.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger, Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 15
Kudos: 127





	Walking the wire

**Author's Note:**

> The first half of this story references Hermione’s torture by Bellatrix in Draco's POV, so reader's discretion advised if that makes you uncomfortable. 
> 
> I know, I know, I keep coming back to this scene but I feel like it's such a turning point in Draco's conflict and character growth; thank you for reading!

* * *

Draco Malfoy couldn’t stop sweating.

Sweat dripped down his neck and slithered down his black robes, pooling in the creases between his fingers, and drenching his underarms with uncomfortable, damp heat.

Hermione Granger screamed relentlessly— terrible, rippling sounds that stretched and strangled with pain as they vibrated every air particle in the drawing room. It was like the world was frozen, everything else hovering in place as her screams slammed into him like a cresting wave and reverberated to the base of his skull, shivering down the rigid line of his spine. 

Draco’s toes curled within his shoes and his entire body shook with tremors. But he couldn’t drop his guard; he fortified his occlumency shields and suppressed his wince, schooling his expression into a blank slate. _Aloof, casual, and composed_ , he repeated to himself. 

Bellatrix was saying something to her. Draco couldn’t discern individual words, but with each harsh whisper that hissed into the shell of Granger’s ear—Bellatrix’s mouth so close that her rouge lipstick stained Granger’s skin— Granger progressively crumpled into desperate sobs. 

“I-I don’t know,” Granger managed to choke out, tears streaming down her face and mixing with the blood smeared on the corners of her mouth. 

Her voice wobbled like a thin reed, raspy and uncertain, and one gust of wind away from being blown into nothing. Considering the nearly-emaciated condition she was in and the fact that she had just been on the receiving end of a white-hot _Cruciatus_ curse, this shouldn’t have surprised him.

But for some reason, it did.

Because he had only known one version of Hermione Granger— the feisty Gryffindor who was always teeming with snooty confidence and insufferable righteousness and foolish courage. Frustratingly unbreakable, no matter how many times he dragged her down or shot lowbrow insults at her.

But now here she was…dirty and defeated on his drawing room floor and so agonizingly… human.

This was supposed to be what Draco wanted, wasn’t it? This very moment was pureblood superiority in action: the insubordinate Mudblood learning her place, broken and battered at the feet of his pureblood family. After 6 years of having to go to school with this know-it-all, swotty, and insolent Mudblood, Draco was finally irrevocably superior to her.

So then why…why was his stomach churning so viciously? Why did sour bile rise to his throat and when did breathing become so difficult?

Voldemort was winning.

Draco’s side was going to win.

Harry Potter and his band of merry do-gooders were powerless and trapped in his cellar, their persistent pounding on the door muffled and ignored. All the cards were unfolding as they were supposed to, weren’t they?

“‘I don’t know’ isn’t an answer! Stupid girl, and here I thought you were supposed to be clever!” Bellatrix’s shrill screech dragged Draco back to the present; he stifled a gasp as his aunt pointed her wand at Granger point blank, and bellowed the _Cruciatus_ curse once again.

The screams returned in full-force, and somehow beyond his imagination, they were even worse than the first round. Granger’s body rolled with uneven thumps as she convulsed on the floor, hands repeatedly fisting and re-opening as she flailed like her insides were being ground to powder. Blood dribbled down her nose in messy rivulets and smeared her face with splotches of red.

Her blood was a shiny dark red, and he realized with a numb sort of recognition that her pain, her blood, and her screams, were no different than his.

Draco turned away. This time, when his occlumency shields wavered, he allowed the cracks to fissure through his walls.

_“Draco, you are not a killer,”_ Dumbledore’s last words whispered to him.

He was shaking now, his knees buckling so violently that he was lucky to be still standing.

“Strengthen your walls,” his father hissed from beside him.

Gulping down a lump in his throat, Draco tried to fortify his occlumency shields again, he really did. But it was futile and he knew it—his reconstruction attempts were flimsier than thatching a roof with straw, and the cracks he needed to seal only grew larger and more uncontrollable with each second of Granger’s torture. 

“Draco! She is a Mudblood,” his father’s voice growled, his words ebbing and flowing like a distant ocean behind Granger’s screams. “She has stolen something precious from your aunt, and you hate her for her impudence.”

His father’s voice felt far away, like he was underwater. Or maybe Draco was the one underwater.

Hate her? No…the denial crept on him like a cold puddle of rain water seeping through his shoes.

He didn’t really hate her. Maybe he never did. It was humiliating to be bested by her and infuriating that her and her friends were constantly lauded as heroes. But he had never truly wanted her dead.

_“Draco, you are not a killer.”_

Draco looked down at Granger, whimpering on the floor with broken and choppy gasps and tear tracks down her face. Her eyelids fluttered erratically, a few droops away from completely knocking out unconscious.

This wasn’t what he wanted.

There was not a sliver of joy in witnessing Granger’s torture, and he was foolish to think that this was _ever_ something he wanted.

As Granger’s pants slowed to even breaths, Draco’s shoulders dropped as he unconsciously relaxed.

Finally. It was over. With her knocked out, she could be tossed in the cellar with the rest of her hobbling friends and get away from his psychotic aunt.

But life never worked out in Draco’s favor, and in the next second Bellatrix pounced on top of Granger’s prone body and with the tip of her wand, slashed scars onto Granger’s pale, bony wrist.

The ear-splitting scream that ripped out of Granger’s mouth was drenched with the purest form of misery, and her legs pounded against the floor as she struggled underneath Bellatrix.

Draco visibly flinched—the agony of Hermione Granger was going to haunt him for the rest of his life.

_Stop,_ Draco felt the word burst through his occlumency shields and shatter them like a sheet of glass.

_Stop the spell. She is going to die._ _If this continues, Hermione Granger is going to die on your drawing room floor._

Draco clutched his head, his fingers digging into his scalp as he squeezed his eyes shut and bit on the inside of his cheek.

_You’re a coward. A pathetic coward._

What was he supposed to do?

What was he supposed to fucking do?

Draco wasn’t naïve to his predicament. If he did anything that was slightly misaligned with the Dark Lord’s plans, then his entire family would be mercilessly skewered and hung out to dry.

Fuckin’ Dumbledore. Why did the old man have to fill his head with the ludicrous idea that he _did_ have a choice? That he could be something other than the villain of this story? He had literally no viable options but to be evil.

But was he really supposed to do nothing and let Granger die in his home?

_“Draco, you are not a killer,”_ Dumbledore’s last words echoed through his head once more, so confident and jarringly clear that it was like the Headmaster was in the room himself, his spectacles slipping down his nose as he regarded Draco with an expectant stare in those twinkling blue eyes. 

“ _Stupefy_.”

The screaming stopped. Gasping, breathless sobs soon took their place.

Draco looked down, and immediately froze at what he saw. His wand was drawn and pointed at Bellatrix. The spell had been cast…by him?

Draco whipped his head back. Both of his parents stared at him with matching wide-eyed expressions, mouths agape. His father recovered first, the fury in Lucius’ eyes flared like a wildfire as he pinned Draco with a deathly glare. 

“Draco, what in bloody hell have you _done_?” Lucius spat, setting his jaw.

A rough scratching sound came from behind him, and Draco whirled around to see Bellatrix’s hands slapping against the ground, eyes wild as she attempted to resist his spell. On impulse, Draco fired off a body bind spell, followed by an _Expelliarmus_ for good measure.

Never trust anyone that was holding a wand.

“Draco, what are you doing?” Narcissa’s desperate plea came next, but Draco didn’t even turn around.

As if he was on autopilot, he felt his feet carry him towards Granger’s prone form and scoop her into his arms. She was so light—a skeletal structure with skin pulled over— the only indication that she was even alive was the faint warmth radiating from her body.

“Draco! Scrounge together the last iotas of common sense you have in that thick skull of yours. Drop. the. Mudblood,” Lucius enunciated, slamming his cane into the ground for emphasis. “You will be killed if the Dark Lord gets word of this. _We_ will all be killed.”

Instinctively, Draco curled Granger’s battered body protectively against his chest. His eyes darted from his father and mother, and he watched the panic peek out of their occlumency shields the longer he stood motionless and clutching Granger.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out. Because he was, he truly was. His inability to stomach Hermione Granger’s torture may have cost his parent’s and himself their lives.

Lucius’s grey eyes flashed with rage, his irises darkening like storm clouds. “Just what the bloody hell are you _thinking_ —”

Not thinking, no, he had already gone past that point. Only _doing_ now.

Before his father could finish his sentence, Draco sprinted past his parents and slammed his shoulder into the double doors, thrusting them open and rushing out through the gap.

“ _Draco!_ ” Both of his parents shouted after him, but it was too late. He couldn’t waste time ruminating on the fucking death wish he had just signed. Getting the fuck out of here was his only option now. 

Time was against him, and he needed to get them out of the perimeter of the Manor’s wards and then apparate within seconds.

Hogwarts was out of the question. He wracked his brain for alternatives, and the most logical place that came to mind was a hidden safehouse in France that no one, aside from himself and his parents, knew existed.

It would have to do. 

He swerved through tight hallways and skidded to a stop in what appeared like a solid wooden wall. Shifting Granger’s weight onto one arm, he pulled out his wand and slashed at his unmarked wrist, then splattered his blood onto the wall. His blood faded through the surface like raindrops drying under the sun, and after accepting his Malfoy blood, the walls rumbled away to reveal a secret tunnel.

Draco shoved himself through the cramped space and navigated by the dim candlelight. He pressed Granger’s body securely against him, and something warm and wet flowed onto his hand. Blood.

He released the hand that had been gripping Granger’s wrist and examined the red liquid smearing his sweaty palms.

There was something crudely scarred into her wrist, and he leaned over for a closer look. In red jagged lines was the word _Mudblood,_ the last letter ‘D’ curling off crookedly and unfinished.

Draco clenched his jaw, stemming the bleeding by covering her wrist with his palm.

The blood from his wrist mixed with the blood dripping off her scar, and the heavy irony settled in his chest that he was right.

Their blood was indistinguishable. He couldn’t tell where his blood stopped, and where her blood started. 

x-x-x-x-x-x

x-x-x

* * *

Draco landed silently on a patch of dead grass; it seemed to have rained a few hours earlier, and his heels sunk two centimeters into the mud. The skies above them were an empty void—starless and pitch black. Nothing but dark, tall trees surrounded them, and the cold air of an April night settled heavily on his shoulders. He held his breath as his pupils dilated and adjusted to their new surroundings.

The hem of Granger’s jumper had ridden up in the apparition process, and Draco’s fingers splayed over the curve of her waist. His fingers twitched, she was warm and still very much alive, and the realization calmed him enough to spur into action.

He pulled out his wand and slashed the open palm of the hand that wasn’t marked with Granger’s blood, then squeezed his fists to drip the blood onto the grass. There was a faint shimmer of an undulating barrier as the wards accepted his Malfoy blood, and after the briefest flicker of light, Malfoy stepped forward and walked towards the shadowy silhouette of the French safehouse. 

On the outside, the safehouse was a quaint cottage nestled in a dense forest, but the inside had been magically extended to contain several rooms, a spacious living room, and a practical kitchen area. Draco nudged open the door and slipped through the narrow opening, then veered towards the side to the living room. It was sparsely furnished with sleek, black leather furniture, a mahogany bookshelf, and a stone fireplace that had never been used.

Draco laid Granger down on a chaise lounge chair and lit a single candle; then hovered uncertainly next to Granger’s body.

With the adrenaline rush from formulating an escape plan draining out of his veins, the true gravity of Draco’s choice weighed on him like lead chains strapped to his chest. He drifted to the floor and buried his face in his knees.

Fuck.

The Dark Lord had already been suspicious of Draco’s resolve as a Death Eater, and with this latest stunt, Draco needed to accept that he had sealed his fate as a man who walked the wire and paid for it.

Technically, Dumbledore had been right. Draco had a choice, specifically two choices.

Live long enough to be the villain to everybody, or die as a hero to nobody. Apparently, he had chosen the latter.

Suddenly, something, or more accurately _someone,_ crashed into his side and there was a sickening crack of his ribs before he was slammed onto his back. As his vision exploded with dizzying flashes of white stars, he felt his wand being ripped out of the inside pocket of his blazer.

“What the fuc—”

“Shut up Malfoy,” clipped a stern voice above him, and he felt the sharp tip of his own wand press onto his neck.

As Draco blinked back his vertigo, Granger straddled his upper body, her brown eyes dilated to liquid pools of black in the darkness of the room, and her bruised lip set into a firm line. If he wasn’t so livid that she had attacked him, he may have been impressed that she managed to catch him off guard even in her current state.

Her entire body trembled from the tips of her tangled, frizzy hair to her thighs clamped on either side of him. Tremors were a common after effect of the _Cruciatus_ curse, and her hand shook so violently that she unwittingly pricked several drops of blood from his neck.

A feral growl rumbled from the back of his throat, but she only seized his collar tighter with her other hand, nearly choking him as her fingers curled around his neck.

“Don’t. Move,” she ordered. Despite the hoarse and ragged quality of her voice, she still managed to be incredibly bossy. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t hex you to oblivion right now.”

Draco didn’t answer— his lips curled into a snarl, and he bucked his hips and wildly thrashed his arms to try to get her the fuck off of him.

Using the hand that wasn’t pointing the wand, Granger yanked him up by the collar and then shoved him down into the dusty, hardwood floors. Pain exploded from the back of his skull and his vision temporarily blanked to black; he bit his lip to stop himself from screaming. 

“ _Petrificus Totalus,”_ she cast with _his_ wand, and the bloody thing actually listened to her.

Fuck, even his own wand, an inanimate object made of wood, had betrayed him. Like an invisible rope binding him, his arms and legged snapped together and he stiffened like a metal rod had replaced his spine.

“What were you planning to do after you captured me? Torture me some more? Sell me to the Death Eaters? Or were you hoping to finish me off yourself?” Granger accused icily.

Unfiltered rage rippled through his veins, his eyes flashing at the injustice of this whole shitty scenario. Pain throbbed behind his eyes and blood pounded in his ears like a relentless drum.

Why the fuck did he save her again?

Granger sighed, begrudgingly acknowledging that Draco couldn’t speak under the full body-bind curse, and murmured a reluctant, “ _Finite Incantatem.”_

Draco hacked out a watery cough, and a tiny twinge of guilt flickered in Granger’s eyes. She loosened her grasp slightly so she wasn’t bruising his flesh, though her nails had left tiny red crescents along his pale skin. But the small mercy obviously wasn’t enough, and Draco fixed her with his most hateful glare.

“Fuck you, Granger,” he spat. “I _saved_ you, though you’ve made it abundantly clear that I should have left you to die on the floor.”

Her eyebrows rose skeptically, and he noticed the angry, purple bruises on her neck and the dried, crusty patches of blood on her dirt-streaked cheeks.

“Save me?” she repeated slowly, “why would you do that? Do you really expect me to believe that rubbish after what your _family_ just put me through?” Her eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. “Can you give me a single reason why I should trust you?”

“I can’t,” Draco stated.

It was true, he couldn’t scrap together a single reason why she shouldn’t kill him right here and now.

In fact, it was probably in her best interest to do so.

Her friends were imprisoned in the Manor’s cellars, his psychotic aunt had callously tortured her and nearly murdered her without abandon, and the Dark Lord would be descending upon them at any moment.

Draco paused—he replayed his last thought. Ah yes, the Dark Lord would be descending upon _them_ at any moment. With the indignancy of being thrown around like a doll, Draco had nearly forgotten about his impending demise. He stopped struggling and let his muscles go lax, allowing the weight of his body to sink into the floorboards like a dead man lying in his own grave.

“I can’t give you a single reason why you should believe me,” he said again, his voice strangely calm and hollow. “If I was in your place, I sure as hell wouldn’t.”

He raised his head off the ground, pressing the sensitive skin of his neck onto the tip of his own wand. Granger instinctively pulled the wand back; it seemed that her initial anger had waned, and she was now cognizant about accidentally stabbing his throat.

A bitter smile crept up on one side of his mouth. Oh Granger, if she wanted to hurt him, then she needed to do it properly.

“But you don’t have a choice but to believe me, do you? Like it or not Granger, we’re in this fucked-up situation together.” Draco chuckled darkly. “It’s not a question of if, but _when,_ the Dark Lord finds me. Do you really think he’s going to allow me to live another day? I’ve become a blood traitor, and over the worst person possible— _you_.”

“So, go ahead and do it,” he said casually, and if he wasn’t pinned to the floor he might have shrugged. “Kill me now. I suspect that you may be more merciful than the Dark Lord, but I may be wrong.”

“Shut up, Malfoy,” she cut him off sharply, but her eyes weren’t so dark anymore and flashed through a myriad of emotions—anger, irritation, and a glimpse of hesitation. She emitted a muffled scream through closed lips, and then in her snootiest voice, she scolded him, “Don’t say hopeless things like that! We’re still alive, aren’t we? And free, for the moment at least. I suspect that your parents are buying us time, but our window of opportunity is limited, and we should be using it more wisely than fighting with each other.”

“Excuse me, I seem to recall that _you_ were the one that started—”

“We’re going to save Harry and Ron, and everyone who’s locked in that cellar too. We’re going to win this war,” Granger paused, swallowing down a lump in her throat. “W-We have a plan to take _him_ down, alright? Harry, Ron, and myself are going to fix this broken world. And it’s going to _work,_ and then we’ll return to school, you and me _both_ , and we’ll finish our N.E.W.Ts and go our merry ways in our separate adult lives.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Granger, listen to yourself. Why are you trying to force-feed yourself a steaming pile of shite? Potter and Weasley are as good as dead, and soon enough, we will be too.”

“No!” She sprung up abruptly, pacing the floor and gripping his wand so tightly she might as well have snapped it. “Harry and Ron are alive…I just know it! Harry wouldn’t die now, no, he’s much too determined for it to end this way. Harry _can’t_ die right now.”

Draco propped himself up with his elbows and massaged the tender bruise purpling on his collarbone. “Well Granger, it isn’t exactly your decision whether or not Potter lives, is it?”

“I have to save them,” Granger continued, completely ignoring him and hastening the speed of her pacing. “Malfoy, you can get us through the Manor’s barriers, can’t you? There are secret passages warded by your blood, right?”

Draco gaped. “You can’t seriously think that I’d _help_ you on this suicide mission.”

“Do you have a choice? We’re in this situation together,” she snapped, parroting his words back at him. “You said so yourself, didn’t you? Either you can stay here and sit on your hands, waiting for the seconds to tick by before you’re killed by that madman, or you can help us defeat him and win this war.”

“There is no winning in this war!”

“You don’t know that!”

“I do know that!”

“No! We can’t give up without even trying!”

“Damn it, Granger!” he erupted, pulling himself to a sitting position and glaring so sharply that he might as well have pierced through her soul. “You’re bloody logical, aren’t you? Face the fucking facts. The Dark Lord has control over the Ministry, Hogwarts, _and_ my family. Harry Potter has been captured and is very likely dead. Defeating the Dark Lord has been off the table for a long time, and there hasn’t been a single pinprick of hope since the day he was resurrected.”

A long pause followed, and it was silent for so long that Draco wondered if she had stomped over to another part of the house and apparated away, leaving him to die alone. But then he saw the silhouette of her body— so thin and waifish, and battered and bruised— slide down to the floor and lean back against the chaise lounge.

She hid her face in her arms, but her entire body wracked with sobs and she whimpered pathetically like a lost child. As much as he wanted to scorn her for her pitiful display of weakness, he couldn’t exactly blame her.

On some level, he understood her. This wasn’t exactly the life he had envisioned living at 16 years-old either.

The single candle between them flickered uneasily, casting long shadows against the drab white walls. 

“Granger…” he started to say, but then stopped short. What was he supposed to say? They weren’t by any means friends, and Draco wasn’t one to give out platitudes of empty comfort. 

She raised her head, fat tears brimming from the corner of her eyes and dripping down her cheeks. She shot him a wan smile.

“Draco, for the record, I _did_ believe in you. At least I did before,” she whispered, her voice barely above a rasp. “I believed in you throughout all of sixth year. I defended you against Harry, I thought that his theories on you being a Death Eater were mental. I knew that you walked the wire between good and evil, but I believed that even though you were a horrible, schoolyard bully, you were never truly evil enough to become a Death Eater. Draco, you are a foul, loathsome little cockroach, but you are not a killer.”

He flinched as she repeated Dumbledore’s last words— she wasn’t there, how could she have known?

She waited patiently for his reply. She seemed to expect something from him, some sort of reaction that would have affirmed that he wasn’t evil, and that she had done the right thing by believing in some illusion of his moral integrity.

But he gave her nothing, disappointing yet another person in his life. How could he say anything when he had already fallen over the precipice a long time ago?

Granger sighed. “Never mind, Malfoy. Forget I said anything. I don’t know why you bothered saving me when you’re going to force yourself to play the villain anyways.”

Her tears stopped streaming down her cheeks, and she sat, hunched over and curled into herself.

“I’m a selfish man by nature, and the reason why I saved you is of course, selfish as well.”

The voice that spoke didn’t sound like his own, and he kept his face neutral as she lifted her head and regarded him curiously.

“At the rate Bellatrix was going, she was going to kill you. If you had died in my drawing room floor, right before my eyes while I did nothing but watch, I would be haunted by the experience for the rest of my life.” For the first time that night, he looked into her eyes, actually looked at her as a person. They still weren’t friends, but after being bound by this traumatic experience, they could never be nothing to each other. 

There was an odd expression on her face, the loudmouth know-it-all for once, having nothing to say.

“You would think that after witnessing so many _Crucios_ , I would get used to it. But it doesn’t work that way, not really,” he admitted softly.

He raised his arm and looked at where he had slashed his palm and wrist earlier. Dry blood stained his skin, itchy and crusting over, and he vaguely wondered what the fuck this war was all about.

An object flew towards him, and with the muscle-memory vestiges of his Seeker reflexes, he automatically moved his hand to snatch it. He blinked at the familiar feel of Hawthorn between his fingers. His wand.

“I’m sorry for hurting you…you should heal yourself,” she mumbled.

She resolutely avoided his eyes; it wasn’t like Granger to give up fighting, even when hope was nothing more than the tiniest pinprick of light.

He sighed, resigned. As much as he hated to admit it, she was right. There were two choices, and although the odds were certainly stacked against them, only one choice offered a sliver of survival.

He couldn’t comfort her. That wasn’t something that Draco had the capacity to do for her.

But he _could_ remind her of who she was, and she could take comfort in that.

Hermione Granger— the feisty Gryffindor who was always teeming with snooty confidence and insufferable righteousness and foolish courage. Frustratingly unbreakable, no matter how many times he dragged her down or shot lowbrow insults at her.

Draco waved his wand, and instead of cleaning off his dried blood and healing his bruises, he lit the stone fireplace.

Bright orange flames jumped to life, the sudden waves of warmth flowing over his cold fingers. A plush scarlet rug appeared beneath them, decorated with golden squares and complimented by gold trim. He switched the furniture next—the leather chaise lounge behind her transfiguring to a long, squashy, red sofa with matching gold throw pillows.

Admittedly, he didn’t know much about Granger, but it was common knowledge that she lived and breathed in the school library…

He summoned books off the mahogany bookshelf and arranged them neatly beside her in colorful stacks of tomes and hardcover textbooks and novels.

Granger’s mouth dropped open as she drank in her new surroundings, her eyes bugging almost comically, and becoming impossibly wider as she watched him hang a huge Gryffindor tapestry over the crackling fireplace. It unraveled confidently with a whooshing _thump,_ kicking up a whir of dust. The Gryffindor crest— a roaring lion rearing on its hind legs, proudly stood in the middle of the tapestry.

The tacky color scheme of scarlet and gold was certainly not to Draco’s preferences, but even he could admit that it was less depressing than a single candle in the dark.

“You know, you’re actually not that far off,” Granger mused. “Have you been in the Gryffindor common room before?”

Draco ignored her, suppressing the pleased feeling rising in his chest from being praised.

“You are an insufferable Gryffindor, aren’t you?” he said instead. “You’ve never listened to anything I’ve said before, and we both know you’re not going to start now.”

Draco sighed, trying to feel more irritated at himself for what he was about to say.

But he couldn’t, not really. Perhaps there was a small, hidden part of his soul that wanted to believe he had more than two choices, that a tiny pinprick of hope indeed existed.

“So, what’s the bloody plan to save Potter and Weasley.”

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> If you've read any of my other Dramione works, this story is a bit of a nod to a few chapters in [5 am, waking up](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23501158/chapters/56355256) ;)
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please let me know your thoughts and leave a comment if you can :)


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